The Benefits of Mobile Worker Management

In 2015, the world’s mobile workforce population was estimated to be 1.3 billion people – 37.2% of the world’s working population. The growing popularity of the mobile workforce presents unique challenges for those who own dispatch-centric businesses. Choosing the right devices for your mobile employees can be difficult without the proper guidance. There are many systems to choose from but only one will make the most sense for you and your team.

Without a Management System in place, there is no way to measure your mobile workforce’s performance. This ultimately causes problems with efficiency, safety, and even customer service. As one of the age-old adages goes, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”

What are the benefits of Mobile Worker Management (MWM) for your company and which systems and tools will help you mitigate the risk of misuse or damage to your equipment? We’ve narrowed it down to communication, safety, efficiency, and customer service.

Better Communication

Unless you have a manager on site with every mobile worker, it’s hard to tell what is going on out in the field. Mobile Worker Management applications like GPS and Geofencing record where workers are in the field, arrival and departure times, and statuses of particular jobs. As a manager, better communication and documentation of mobile workers will help you understand common issues that workers face on the job, the average time a certain job takes, and then, in turn, improve upon those statistics. Not only does the application track jobs and their statuses, but it also is a secure platform that automatically updates all of the people with access, eliminating the guesswork and time-consuming phone calls.

Safety

A mobile workforce presents unique circumstances for employers such as insurance for employees driving on the job, the potential for accidents (especially if the employee is using a mobile device while driving). Moving away from phone-based communication can help minimize these distractions. MWM applications such as DispatchPlus also record verbal communications for job documentation, removing tedious phone plans and unreliable calls from the long list of potential distractions.

Safety in the field is key. Knowing where your employees are, and even which route they take to get to the job, as well as GPS software for directions, helps to eliminate distractions and make the mobile workplace a safe environment.

Efficiency

With the ability to document the day-to-day activities of your employees, reports and assessments are simple. MWM allows you to take notes on each job including status updates, issues that may occur on the job, and conversations between the manager and the employee. By learning from these documented reports, managers can improve future issues that may cause delays.

Additionally, one central application provides a connected, singular platform that is easily maintained, and can give the company a focal point for management. This software can improve employee accountability, and identify where employees are having difficulty. The processes and procedure of the business will naturally streamline, and past issues become resolvable as a result.

Customer Service

The responsibility of a manager includes making sure that he or she maintains open communication with the client. The more information he or she can provide a client about the status of a job, the better customer service ratings the company will receive.

In this case, transparency is key. Management of mobile workers can be tricky since most employees are out in the field, completing a very hands-on job that requires focus.

With GPS tracking systems such as DispatchPlus, a manager can see the location of their employees without receiving verbal confirmation. Then, once the employee is done with the job and out of harm’s way, they can quickly check in via two-way digital radio to give a synopsis of the job and how fast they can move on to the next one.

Before the employee even picks up the radio, the manager can let the client know that the job has been completed and that he or she is waiting on a complete report from the employee. This creates a very intimate relationship between the company and the client and will make a huge difference over other companies who are unable to deliver this kind of service.

More Revenue

Better communication, safer working conditions, more efficient workers, and happy customers are all reasons why more revenue is inevitable. Businesses that run more efficiently allow workers to have time for more daily jobs. Fewer issues mean faster resolutions. If every employee on a ten-person team is 10 percent more efficient, that is the equivalent of hiring an extra person at no cost.

At the same time, these benefits also cut costs that a business might accrue in road accidents, insurance, phone bills, and overall distractions. Not only does Mobile Worker Management increase sales, but also cuts costs – meaning less overhead. Perhaps the biggest reason why management of mobile workers increases revenue is due to the fact that your employees will be able to complete jobs quicker, leaving room for more jobs to be completed. More jobs completed will inevitably lead to more money for your company.

Summary

Mobile Worker Management is essential for any business with a mobile workforce. MWM applications provide a central platform accessible for the manager to oversee each mobile employee from the office, while documenting the completion of projects and questions the worker might have. The benefits of Mobile Worker Management and MWM applications are effective communication, elevated safety, employee efficiency, and better customer service, which ultimately leads to more revenue for the business.